Der Umfaller des Tages: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced on Wednesday that Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, were resuming the suspended peace talks, one day after Mr. Abbas refused to publicly commit to a resumption. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a press conference on Wednesday in Ramallah. Mr. Abbas said Wednesday that that he was returning to the negotiations, but was noncommittal about the timing. Although Ms. Rice did not specify when the talks would resume, she said an American general who was overseeing the effort to carry out the “road map” peace plan would hold his first joint meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian sides next week. “I have been informed by the parties that they intend” to return to peace negotiations, Ms. Rice told reporters after meeting in Jerusalem with the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. Earlier, Mr. Abbas had said that peace talks with Israel could restart only after Israel secured a truce in the violence in the Gaza Strip. He appeared later to back away from that precondition, an uncomfortable one for both Israel and the Bush administration, which refuse to negotiate with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza and does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. [...] Erneut wird eine ziemlich irre Idee verbreitet: "Defense Minister Ehud Barak is seeking legal approval to evacuate thousands of residents of Gaza City to locations in the south of the Strip to enable the IDF to attack terror infrastructure without hurting civilians." [...] Sehr spät meldet sich ... The Arab League on Wednesday condemned Israel Defense Forces attacks on the Gaza Strip, calling them "crimes against humanity". Arab foreign ministers said they "strongly condemn the barbaric crimes that the Israeli occupation forces committed in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories". Zudem ein nettes Kabinettstückchen: Erst Verträge mit den Franzosen für die nukleare Friedensstromerzeugung unterzeichnen und dann .. Arab countries will walk away from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if Israel ever officially acknowledges it has nuclear weapons, the Arab League announced in a statement Wednesday. [...] Arab foreign ministers kicked off a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday with Arab League chief Amr Moussa calling for unity to end the Lebanese political crisis. "Solidarity, in the form of national reconciliation, is our only way out of the current crisis and future crises," Moussa said in his opening speech. [Weitere Spekulationen schenke ich mir aus Zeitgründen. Da wäre zB die USS cole-Affaire, die entwerder ein Zeichen ist das die Amerikaner den Hezbollah-Militärchef Mughinyeh töteten und nun die Hezbollah bedrohend von einem Schlag gegen Israel abhalten -der meiner Meinung nach sehr bald kommen wird-, oder das man Syrien bedroht um die innenpolitische Zwangslage im Libanon zu beenden, oder gar der auftakt zur Umschichtung für einen Angriff auf den Iran.]

Moshe Arens, "Too much to expect": It was just too much to expect. That Ehud Olmert, the prime minister who brought us the disaster of the Second Lebanon War, had finally learned the lesson of that war. That he now understood that the only way to protect civilians from short-range rocket attacks is to have soldiers on the ground at the rocket-launching sites. That there is no substitute for this. [Grundfalsch und schlecht der Artikel, aber DAS ist eine Meinung die in Israel sehr viele teilen werden.]

Themenkreis Umwelt: "Apart from the security problems": The security problems in the South and the Gaza Strip, and the shakiness of the relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, are drawing attention away from everyday civil issues, which also have serious implications. As in other places in the world where waste is transferred from wealthy countries to developing countries, Israel too disposes of wast scandalously, in areas of the West Bank. Every day trucks carry large quantities of building waste, including toxic substances that endanger the environment and public health, to pirate sites near Palestinian villages. [...] A multiyear decline in the quantity of fertilizer waste in Israel's coastal waters ground to a halt in 2006, leaving high pollution levels in many areas that could cause cancer, damage the nervous system and hinder children's development, according to a recently released report by the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute.

Unterstützenswert: The Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday blasted a series of "outrageous anti-Semitic" cartoons in the Arabic media that compare the situation of Palestinians in Gaza to the Holocaust. The cartoons, which appear in Arab newspapers across the Middle East, repeatedly portray Israelis and Jews as bloodthirsty Nazis, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert depicted as a modern-day Hitler, said the human rights organization, which is devoted to fighting anti-Semitism worldwide.